Do you have any examples of how openSUSE has been crippled by Microsoft? It has already been pointed out further up that this article was _clearly_ either written by someone trying to spread FUD or by someone who just isn't very knowledgable
The openSUSE mailing list (and source code) states directly that a certain feature is disabled because it is covered by Microsoft patents. Were it not for those patents, the feature would be enabled (or given as an option during runtime, etc.). So, something to do with Microsoft (their patents) is crippling openSUSE (who do not enable a feature based on those patents).
Now, it may be that this is not new, and has existed previously as well. It was certainly news to me, and apparently to other readers here. Hopefully this matter can be cleared up. Yet, in essence we do have a case of openSUSE hobbling itself due to Microsoft patents, that part can't be denied, I don't think, contrary to what you are saying here. Or perhaps I didn't understand your point.
Xerox and Kleenex are in fact examples of genericide. The law has provisions for dealing with cases such as you mention, when a trademark becomes a name for an entire category of products. I'm not saying there is a perfect solution, or that the law is simple, but it is aware of the issue you raise, and attempts to deal with it. This issue appears in 'normal' trademark law, not just the internet aspects of it.
Because God knows that if I'm searching for "New Cars" I damn sure don't want to see any advertisements about car dealerships, finance companies, or anythign like that.
No, that isn't the issue at all. You have apparently not bothered to read TFA (I know, I must be new here). Keyword advertising is 100% legal after this bill; anyone and everyone can advertise using keywords like "New Cars". No problem there.
The issue the Utah legislators are against is (the following example is fictitious) Sony buying keyword advertisements for the "XBOX" keyword - in hopes of getting them to buy PS3s instead. The idea behind the law is that, in this example, Microsoft own the XBOX trademark, and by Sony buying ads for "XBOX", they are 'benefiting from another person's trademark'. Or something like that. To be more specific, it might be the case the Sony pay more, and people typing "XBOX" see ads for Sony, and not Microsoft. The legislators see that as "hijacking a trademark".
Now, this is an interesting issue. In essence, this is a case of one entity making use of anothers' trademark for profit. Which does seem a little 'off', at least if you value trademarks (I do, and I disvalue copyright and patents, at least in their current incarnation in the US). However, as pointed out in the past, the real issue isn't what is 'fair', but what is possible. Implementing this law is a lesson in futility. In other words, Utah don't get it. But they are not the complete morons implied by most people's reaction to the Slashdot title for this story.
Tension between the Islamic world and the west will remain, and may increasingly be targeted at China "whose new-found materialism, economic vibrancy, and institutionalised atheism, will be an anathema to orthodox Islam".
This is really the most interesting bit of speculation in TFA (aside from the technological and scientific guesses, perhaps, but these are probably also the least credible, if the past is any indication). Indeed, the rise of China will eventually bring it into possible tension with Islam. If the US is a state of 'infidels', then China is far more so, from a fundamentalist Islam point of view. At least the US has some religion, allowing interfaith talks, in theory at least; China is something else completely.
Islamic fundamentalists currently fume against the shower of western culture entering their lands - TV, movies, etc., and the presence of US soldiers. Fairly soon they will face (or already face) a torrent of goods and products from China, which will surely bring with it some cultural impact. Perhaps this will not be of critical impact until Chinese soldiers are stationed outside of China, but that too may occur, as China becomes the main consumer of middle-eastern oil and other resources, prompting it to secure those resources, if only by token military presences in various locations.
Did the email even originate from Microsoft? As far as I can tell, all we have is a single email received by a single person. Perhaps it's a delayed April Fool's joke or something of that sort? It would be incredibly stupid (even for Microsoft) to send out official emails like this.
Even if several people receive such emails, that doesn't prove it is from Microsoft. Is there any official reaction by them, or proof that it came from an official Microsoft email account?
Regardless of this matter, the push for ODF is a great idea.
There are ways, using the windows API, for any process run with Debugger privileges (any Administrator really) to read,write,terminate,create threads, etc in any other process. This was true in Windows 95 and still is in XP and probably Vista, except for protected processes.
Interesting.
This seems very non-secure to me. Any idea if this is standard on other OSes than Windows?
A typical process cannot perform operations such as the following on a protected process:
[...]
Access the virtual memory of a protected process
It's been a while since I knew squat about operating system internals, but aren't processes supposed to not be able to access other processes' memory anyhow? I assume, then, that this means that 'protected processes' are special in that they are also protected from any 'supervisor'-type processes, not just run-of-the-mill? In that case, are 'protected processes' meant to protect the kernel from itself, in some sense?
Most likely I am missing the point here, and can't understand TFA accordingly. Somebody please set me straight.
The Zune is interesting primarily as a demonstration of MS's inability to grab a market where they don't have the monopoly leverage
So far they are proving quite inept with the Zune, yes, but they do have monopoly leverage, through Windows. And if it wasn't for the Wii, they would also be pretty close to closing a monopoly on the console market, in a few years (but that market is unpredictable, so who knows really).
In a while, if other Microsoft projects go well, then a combination of Windows + Windows Home Server + XBOX may easily leverage the Zune, simply by it being the only device to interoperate perfectly with all the systems just mentioned. This is Microsoft's more-or-less admitted strategy.
If you look at the patents, they're pretty much all about text or metadata searching.
Indeed, yes. Furthermore, they seem to be a simple list of standard machine learning (text categorization/information retrieval) methods. I won't bother to go through the entire patent, it is mind-numbingly boring, but here are some details for the beginning of it: (I refer to the claim #'s)
1,2: This is the standard TFIDF method. TF means 'text frequency', you give each word a weight equal to its frequency in the document. IDF means 'inverse document frequency', if a word is rare, you give it more weight. Typically this is done with the logarithm, btw.
4,5,6: This is extremely general. But it sounds like any of a myriad of methods to generate 'higher-order-features'. For example, by using a nonlinear kernel function.
7&9: Sounds like a way to measure the importance of a feature. Many such methods are already in use, for example, mutual information (MI).
8: In other words, a 'stoplist'. Nice way to make it sound really complicated and useful, though.
Skimming the rest of the patent, I don't see much substance. But I admit I didn't go through all of it. Perhaps someone else will have more patience.
I've been using the Business edition of Vista since November. At no time has the system crashed on me, or become overly unstable.
Good for you. The author of TFA had a different experience. Such is the way of the world, YMMV and all that.
I really wonder how much of his problems were caused by Vista, and how much were caused by trying to run legacy/non-updated software.
Isn't the whole point of running a Microsoft OS that you can use legacy Windows apps?
Normally, I'm all for bashing Microsoft, being a Linux/Mac OS X user normally, but even I can't agree with this article.
Agree about what, exactly? Your experiences differ from TFA's author's experiences. Conclusion: Vista, for some people, has problems, and for others it doesn't. You can both agree to that. TFA never asked you to agree to anything like "Vista fails on everyone all the time".
You might not see as many issues with *nix based systems. Why? Well, there just are as many users. This might sound like a cliche but it is a fact.
No, that isn't the issue. There are several matters here. One of them: FOSS software has sources available. It is far easier, for certain types of patches at least, to check if there will be problems by checking source code. Even a simple grep can tell you what apps rely on the element you are changing. Furthermore, the patch's source is shown to the app developers, so if a fix is needed, it can be done more quickly. Working with source is simply much more convenient that working with binaries.
Yes, yes, yes. I was going to post the same, but you beat me to it. 12 Monkeys is an excellent film and should surely count as sci-fi in this context. It is both entertaining and though-provoking, and extremely well-made. In fact, one of my favorite movies of all time (as you can probably see). A shame, then, that it didn't appear on this list.
However, given that Serenity made top spot, the list is quite dubious. I loved Firefly, and I loved Serenity, but "best sci-fi movie of all time" it ain't.
Acceptance of evolution and faith in a higher power are not mutually exclusive. Just ask the Catholics.
I have always thought this, and respected Catholicism for it. Yet TFA says
Seventy-three percent of Evangelical Protestants say they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years; 39 percent of non-Evangelical Protestants and 41 percent of Catholics agree with that view.
Odd, given that the official position of the Catholic Church contradicts that view? Or am I missing something?
The problem is, both the summary and TFA mention separate issues with both "Vista" and "Vista & IE7". It isn't clear exactly what that means. Does IE7 work on XP with these apps? TFA seems to indicate these are webapps, so shouldn't the browser be the most important component? Flipping things, do other browsers (IE6, Firefox) work on Vista? How about Firefox on any platform?
Without really knowing the answers to all of these, I don't have an opinion on whether this is Microsoft's fault or the app-builder's fault. Yet, if this is a true webapp, ensuring that it works on Firefox should be enough for virtually all cross-platform compatibility issues, shouldn't it? If it doesn't run on Vista/IE7, just tell them to use Firefox for that app. It doesn't cost money; this isn't lock-in.
What I got from it was that a new directive, aimed at harsher Europe-wide criminal punishments for piracy, will be applied only to commercial piracy. Noncommercial piracy is not covered by the new directive. However, if it was illegal in a member state before, then it remains so.
I think that's a fair statement of the licensing situation.
If they solved these matters - simplified allowing other FOSS licenses, and expanded that to all of Qt, not just Qt/X11 - then I would be very happy. But the thing is, 'they' in this case are Trolltech, a for-profit corporation, and I have no confidence that they will do so. I hope my skepticism is proven wrong. Meanwhile, I personally prefer the GTK+ licensing, as things stand.
First, you are right, I was not aware of that clause in the QPL. I hope you can forgive me, though, because the reason I only skimmed through the QPL previously is that Trolltech themselves recommend against using it:
For historical reasons, the Qt/X11 version is also available under the QPL license. We do not recommend the use of the QPL, especially if you are planning for your Open Source software to be distributed on Mac OS X or Windows.
Trolltech clearly intend what I said before - that you must be GPL, or pay them. For historic reasons, there is a sort of 'loophole' with Qt/X11, in the form of the QPL. But using it will prevent you from using some of the more impressive advantages of Qt, which are its cross-platform capabilities. Thus, this is lock-in: run only on Linux, or pay Trolltech (or be GPL).
Therefore, despite agreeing that what you said about the QPL is correct, essentially the matter is as I presented it earlier: Qt's licensing is far more restrictive than e.g. GTK+'s, and in ways that can cause actual problems for developers. Qt's licensing is holding it back, and that's a shame, because it is really very nice.
Qt is exactly like my other example, readline. You can write terminal-based apps without readline, just like you can write Linux GUI apps that run under KDE without Qt. However, in both cases their functionality is considerably reduced. That's a deliberate tradeoff you have to make if you want to make your software closed source. KDE at least gives you the option of paying money to get the benefits of the library without having to give people the freedoms they want.
Or, instead, one would use a freer library, like GTK+. The licensing just funnels people away from Qt, that is the simple fact, as I read it.
And there are lots of companies who feel they can't develop for Linux because they can't ship a Linux kernel with proprietary binary drivers installed and then refuse people the source. So the kernel isn't as different as you seem to think.
True, as I said, the Kernel and GTK+ both require being GPL'ed if you modify them/derive from them, which for the kernel means (among other things) a device driver. So, it still seems to me that the Kernel and GTK+ are much more similar to each other than Qt to either of them.
You call it a bug, I call it a feature. People make the same complaint about the Linux kernel, GNU readline, and so on. If you want a proprietary-friendly OS, go use Windows or OS X.
No, no. That isn't the issue at all. Qt isn't like the Linux kernel, GTK+ is. Look - you can write non-GPL apps to run on top of the Linux kernel, in userspace. If you want to modify the kernel itself, only then do you need to write GPL code. In that sense, the Kernel's use of the GPL is very much like GTK+'s use of the LGPL - you can write whatever non-GPL app you want using GTK+; if you want to modify GTK+ itself, you need to be GPL/LGPL.
This isn't a feature. There are very good reasons why both the Linux kernel and GTK+ allow non-GPL apps to use them. This allows proprietary apps, but it also allows non-GPL FOSS apps as well. And this is one reason why the Linux kernel is so successful, and likewise GTK+. Qt is holding itself back with this licensing issue.
You, sir, are 100% correct, and this issue should be pointed out more.
Qt - and hence KDE - is based on the idea that you can either develop using one of two FOSS licenses (GPL, QPL), or you have to pay the nice people at Trolltech. Note that even other FOSS licenses are in a bind here - the issue isn't just with proprietary software. Both a proprietary app and a BSD-licensed one (for example) would not be able to use the GPL/QPL option. They would have to pay Trolltech. This may be an option for the proprietary app, but it is not an option for the BSD one.
BSD, as mentioned, is just one example - any non-GPL and non-QPL FOSS license has this problem. I have, by the way, no problem with Trolltech making money. Just not in this way. This is a situation of "use our 2 approved FOSS licenses, or none at all". Not exactly in line with general FOSS principles.
GTK+ is LGPL, which is an excellent choice of license for what GTK+ is. Qt would be better off to do the same.
To summarize, and make it perfectly clear: the licensing issues with Qt are not over, despite what many say.
How is it misleading? The summary says "But with the latest revisions, Linus will entertain moving the kernel over to the GPL v3" - which means pretty much what the quote of Linus you gave says, "The current draft makes me think it's at least a possibility in theory, but whether it's practical and worth it is a totally different thing."
No, actually the article directly implies that human treatment will come out of this:
"In the future, controlling the activity patterns of neurons may enable very specific treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases, with few or no side effects," said Edward Boyden, assistant professor
- so this is not just a case of a bad writeup of serious research, or a bad summary on Slashdot. It could be a quote taken out of context, though. In any case, the researchers think this (or something related to it) will be viable eventually, while I, for one, must agree with the grandparent post - how exactly will these light-sensitive chloride pumps get into the brains of already-living sick people?
I assume that the final human treatment, if any is arrived at, will be very different from what they are doing at present. Time will tell. In any case, a very interesting area of research, even if it is hyped a little regarding possible applications.
as opposed to assuming they did exist, yet somehow managed to avoid being recorded anywhere - especially if this person was associated with miracles, seen or unseen?
Well, regarding 'somehow managed to avoid being recorded' - if a "Jesus" character existed, he was a tiny, unnoticable figure. Just some guy with a following who got cruxified, there were plenty like him. There is really not much reason to think he would be chronicled; he was completely insignificant in his time. Only later (generations later) did his followers amount to anything of historic value, and were worthy of noting down in records.
So, the lack of evidence proves nothing either way, it is consistent with both skeptical views, that there was some guy called "Jesus" who had a small following, and that there wasn't. (Note that it is of course inconsistent with a literal religious interpretation of history, we are in agreement there.)
As for "especially if this person was associated with miracles, seen or unseen" - I don't think having miracles associated with him makes him less likely to have existed. Every religious figure has some supernatural folklore around him/her (even the last Pope!). I would be surprised if he did exist, found a religion, and not have all sorts of wild stories told about him. So this doesn't change things either way, IMHO.
First, you are right, I didn't respond to your example of Jack Ryan. Apologies. You did keep it last, though, so I assumed the first 3 out of 4 were your essential claim. I guess I misunderstood.
Note: I haven't been conditioned into believing Jesus existed (as human or divine); I an not a Christian, nor even from a mostly-Christian country, actually (not that it matters).
Now, as to the matter: your point is fair, that Jesus appears as a character in the texts, and that that alone is not conclusive; we need corroborating evidence. There is no such clear evidence, as you say, just some highly-controversial tidbits (e.g. certain passages from Hebrew texts of that period have been interpreted as referring to Jesus).
My argument is not that someone called Jesus existed, but rather that that is a simple explanation for the stories about him - a charismatic figure can generate a following, which later writes stories about him/her. In fact, that is how religions form, when we have enough evidence to actually investigate them: Islam, Bahaism, Scientology - all have a crucial founding figure. Some of those figures are later said to have had various 'supernatural' qualities and/or attributes (even if those qualities are simply 'he talked to god'). So, I believe that the simplest explanation is that someone called "Jesus" existed, and generated a following around him; those followers later wrote texts about him. Is an alternative possible? Sure. Will we ever know? Probably not.
You are right that there is an element of 'politeness' towards Christianity in the West, people don't like to doubt his existence. This is, however, completely unrelated to my reasons for preferring my theory to the alternative (however small that preference is). I hope I explained why clearly enough in this post.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, it may be that this is not new, and has existed previously as well. It was certainly news to me, and apparently to other readers here. Hopefully this matter can be cleared up. Yet, in essence we do have a case of openSUSE hobbling itself due to Microsoft patents, that part can't be denied, I don't think, contrary to what you are saying here. Or perhaps I didn't understand your point.
Xerox and Kleenex are in fact examples of genericide. The law has provisions for dealing with cases such as you mention, when a trademark becomes a name for an entire category of products. I'm not saying there is a perfect solution, or that the law is simple, but it is aware of the issue you raise, and attempts to deal with it. This issue appears in 'normal' trademark law, not just the internet aspects of it.
The issue the Utah legislators are against is (the following example is fictitious) Sony buying keyword advertisements for the "XBOX" keyword - in hopes of getting them to buy PS3s instead. The idea behind the law is that, in this example, Microsoft own the XBOX trademark, and by Sony buying ads for "XBOX", they are 'benefiting from another person's trademark'. Or something like that. To be more specific, it might be the case the Sony pay more, and people typing "XBOX" see ads for Sony, and not Microsoft. The legislators see that as "hijacking a trademark".
Now, this is an interesting issue. In essence, this is a case of one entity making use of anothers' trademark for profit. Which does seem a little 'off', at least if you value trademarks (I do, and I disvalue copyright and patents, at least in their current incarnation in the US). However, as pointed out in the past, the real issue isn't what is 'fair', but what is possible. Implementing this law is a lesson in futility. In other words, Utah don't get it. But they are not the complete morons implied by most people's reaction to the Slashdot title for this story.
Islamic fundamentalists currently fume against the shower of western culture entering their lands - TV, movies, etc., and the presence of US soldiers. Fairly soon they will face (or already face) a torrent of goods and products from China, which will surely bring with it some cultural impact. Perhaps this will not be of critical impact until Chinese soldiers are stationed outside of China, but that too may occur, as China becomes the main consumer of middle-eastern oil and other resources, prompting it to secure those resources, if only by token military presences in various locations.
Did the email even originate from Microsoft? As far as I can tell, all we have is a single email received by a single person. Perhaps it's a delayed April Fool's joke or something of that sort? It would be incredibly stupid (even for Microsoft) to send out official emails like this.
Even if several people receive such emails, that doesn't prove it is from Microsoft. Is there any official reaction by them, or proof that it came from an official Microsoft email account?
Regardless of this matter, the push for ODF is a great idea.
There are ways, using the windows API, for any process run with Debugger privileges (any Administrator really) to read,write,terminate,create threads, etc in any other process. This was true in Windows 95 and still is in XP and probably Vista, except for protected processes.
Interesting.
This seems very non-secure to me. Any idea if this is standard on other OSes than Windows?
Most likely I am missing the point here, and can't understand TFA accordingly. Somebody please set me straight.
In a while, if other Microsoft projects go well, then a combination of Windows + Windows Home Server + XBOX may easily leverage the Zune, simply by it being the only device to interoperate perfectly with all the systems just mentioned. This is Microsoft's more-or-less admitted strategy.
-
1,2: This is the standard TFIDF method. TF means 'text frequency', you give each word a weight equal to its frequency in the document. IDF means 'inverse document frequency', if a word is rare, you give it more weight. Typically this is done with the logarithm, btw.
-
4,5,6: This is extremely general. But it sounds like any of a myriad of methods to generate 'higher-order-features'. For example, by using a nonlinear kernel function.
-
7&9: Sounds like a way to measure the importance of a feature. Many such methods are already in use, for example, mutual information (MI).
-
8: In other words, a 'stoplist'. Nice way to make it sound really complicated and useful, though.
Skimming the rest of the patent, I don't see much substance. But I admit I didn't go through all of it. Perhaps someone else will have more patience.Yes, yes, yes. I was going to post the same, but you beat me to it. 12 Monkeys is an excellent film and should surely count as sci-fi in this context. It is both entertaining and though-provoking, and extremely well-made. In fact, one of my favorite movies of all time (as you can probably see). A shame, then, that it didn't appear on this list.
However, given that Serenity made top spot, the list is quite dubious. I loved Firefly, and I loved Serenity, but "best sci-fi movie of all time" it ain't.
For those that don't know what that means, look here.
The problem is, both the summary and TFA mention separate issues with both "Vista" and "Vista & IE7". It isn't clear exactly what that means. Does IE7 work on XP with these apps? TFA seems to indicate these are webapps, so shouldn't the browser be the most important component? Flipping things, do other browsers (IE6, Firefox) work on Vista? How about Firefox on any platform?
Without really knowing the answers to all of these, I don't have an opinion on whether this is Microsoft's fault or the app-builder's fault. Yet, if this is a true webapp, ensuring that it works on Firefox should be enough for virtually all cross-platform compatibility issues, shouldn't it? If it doesn't run on Vista/IE7, just tell them to use Firefox for that app. It doesn't cost money; this isn't lock-in.
Not how I understood TFA, but of course IANAL.
What I got from it was that a new directive, aimed at harsher Europe-wide criminal punishments for piracy, will be applied only to commercial piracy. Noncommercial piracy is not covered by the new directive. However, if it was illegal in a member state before, then it remains so.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
I think that's a fair statement of the licensing situation.
If they solved these matters - simplified allowing other FOSS licenses, and expanded that to all of Qt, not just Qt/X11 - then I would be very happy. But the thing is, 'they' in this case are Trolltech, a for-profit corporation, and I have no confidence that they will do so. I hope my skepticism is proven wrong. Meanwhile, I personally prefer the GTK+ licensing, as things stand.
Therefore, despite agreeing that what you said about the QPL is correct, essentially the matter is as I presented it earlier: Qt's licensing is far more restrictive than e.g. GTK+'s, and in ways that can cause actual problems for developers. Qt's licensing is holding it back, and that's a shame, because it is really very nice.
Btw, nice sig.
This isn't a feature. There are very good reasons why both the Linux kernel and GTK+ allow non-GPL apps to use them. This allows proprietary apps, but it also allows non-GPL FOSS apps as well. And this is one reason why the Linux kernel is so successful, and likewise GTK+. Qt is holding itself back with this licensing issue.
You, sir, are 100% correct, and this issue should be pointed out more.
Qt - and hence KDE - is based on the idea that you can either develop using one of two FOSS licenses (GPL, QPL), or you have to pay the nice people at Trolltech. Note that even other FOSS licenses are in a bind here - the issue isn't just with proprietary software. Both a proprietary app and a BSD-licensed one (for example) would not be able to use the GPL/QPL option. They would have to pay Trolltech. This may be an option for the proprietary app, but it is not an option for the BSD one.
BSD, as mentioned, is just one example - any non-GPL and non-QPL FOSS license has this problem. I have, by the way, no problem with Trolltech making money. Just not in this way. This is a situation of "use our 2 approved FOSS licenses, or none at all". Not exactly in line with general FOSS principles.
GTK+ is LGPL, which is an excellent choice of license for what GTK+ is. Qt would be better off to do the same.
To summarize, and make it perfectly clear: the licensing issues with Qt are not over, despite what many say.
How is it misleading? The summary says "But with the latest revisions, Linus will entertain moving the kernel over to the GPL v3" - which means pretty much what the quote of Linus you gave says, "The current draft makes me think it's at least a possibility in theory, but whether it's practical and worth it is a totally different thing."
How are these significantly different?
I assume that the final human treatment, if any is arrived at, will be very different from what they are doing at present. Time will tell. In any case, a very interesting area of research, even if it is hyped a little regarding possible applications.
So, the lack of evidence proves nothing either way, it is consistent with both skeptical views, that there was some guy called "Jesus" who had a small following, and that there wasn't. (Note that it is of course inconsistent with a literal religious interpretation of history, we are in agreement there.)
As for "especially if this person was associated with miracles, seen or unseen" - I don't think having miracles associated with him makes him less likely to have existed. Every religious figure has some supernatural folklore around him/her (even the last Pope!). I would be surprised if he did exist, found a religion, and not have all sorts of wild stories told about him. So this doesn't change things either way, IMHO.
First, you are right, I didn't respond to your example of Jack Ryan. Apologies. You did keep it last, though, so I assumed the first 3 out of 4 were your essential claim. I guess I misunderstood.
Note: I haven't been conditioned into believing Jesus existed (as human or divine); I an not a Christian, nor even from a mostly-Christian country, actually (not that it matters).
Now, as to the matter: your point is fair, that Jesus appears as a character in the texts, and that that alone is not conclusive; we need corroborating evidence. There is no such clear evidence, as you say, just some highly-controversial tidbits (e.g. certain passages from Hebrew texts of that period have been interpreted as referring to Jesus).
My argument is not that someone called Jesus existed, but rather that that is a simple explanation for the stories about him - a charismatic figure can generate a following, which later writes stories about him/her. In fact, that is how religions form, when we have enough evidence to actually investigate them: Islam, Bahaism, Scientology - all have a crucial founding figure. Some of those figures are later said to have had various 'supernatural' qualities and/or attributes (even if those qualities are simply 'he talked to god'). So, I believe that the simplest explanation is that someone called "Jesus" existed, and generated a following around him; those followers later wrote texts about him. Is an alternative possible? Sure. Will we ever know? Probably not.
You are right that there is an element of 'politeness' towards Christianity in the West, people don't like to doubt his existence. This is, however, completely unrelated to my reasons for preferring my theory to the alternative (however small that preference is). I hope I explained why clearly enough in this post.